


Father's God

by franks_hands



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, priest Gerard, religious AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2161080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franks_hands/pseuds/franks_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Iero boy had changed. He wasn't much of a boy anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Father's God

The Iero boy had changed since our last encounter.  
He wasn’t much of a boy anymore.  
Although he couldn’t have grown more than an inch, the way he carried himself was different; his chin tipped higher, his chest resting outside of its old hiding place behind his shoulders, and there was a slight quirk to the corner of his lips, new and unwavering.  
The piercings that decorated his face and that tattoos his body spoke volumes.  
He was a man now. That timid, confused little Iero boy was gone.  
Over the years, I’d often thought about that little boy, how he shuffled into my office late one evening while his mother attended a women’s service. The way his lips quivered as he told me he’d been having dreams. I’d chuckled and told him that dreams were a pretty normal thing to have.  
His voice dropped to a whisper, his shoulders drawing in as if he wanted to withdraw from the world, “Dreams about men.”  
I hated that memory because every time it crossed my mind, I felt that same pang in my gut that I’d felt the day he’d actually uttered the words. It was fear that he would go through what I’d gone through, and at such a young age. I wanted to put an end to it. I wanted to do the impossible. I wanted to make him forget about ever wanting to touch, to feel, to be with and hold another man. I didn’t want him to fight that battle himself, I wanted to fight it for him.  
But the things I told him were horrible. And I damaged him. That became evident in the year before he left the church. The damage showed in the way he so openly hated the church-goers around him, so openly hated me. He resented the church and all it stood for because it told him that he couldn’t be who he wanted to be. He couldn’t act on his desires, he couldn’t be with someone he loved, he couldn’t enjoy himself.  
I had told him, that day in my office, that he could find happiness without all of that--the touching and the kissing and the feeling and the warmth, the physical pleasure. I had told him that I had done just that, and it had been the only time I’d ever spoken out loud of what I held as my deepest secret to anyone that wasn’t Mikey. It had been a foolish move and it had been a lie anyway.  
What I didn’t tell the Iero boy was that I had those dreams, too, and that the only thing I wanted more than to be with a man was to make my father proud. Yet even after my father’s passing, I felt held down, restrained and kept from what I craved when I was alone in bed. Frustrated that I wouldn’t let myself commit the sin that I so desperately wanted to commit.  
It had been those feelings that I’d been trying to keep Frank from ever experiencing. Instead, I’d given him other damaging things to feel.  
By the way he looked now, though, grown up and confident in the way he walked, I was fairly certain that he’d avoided the emotions I had been riddled with since becoming a priest. I felt happy for him, even through the intense jealousy. He’d been with men, I could practically see it on him. He’d had sex, he’d touched, he’d pleasured and been pleasured, and he was fine with that.  
After the service, I found my eyes wandering to him as I talked with church-goers, and I had never wanted more to shed my clothes and pull on clothes like he was wearing; ripped blue jeans, a t-shirt displaying some band, and ratty sneakers that had seen better days. He still had no respect for the church or anyone in it.  
“Father Way,” Linda Iero was suddenly meters away from me, her son in tow. I stood up straighter, offering a hand for the woman to shake as she greeted me, “You remember Frank? It’s been a while.”  
I looked past the woman to her son, his eyes dull and uninterested for a moment before they moved to connect with mine, seeming to turn a shade darker. The slight smirk on his face grew.  
I nodded and shook his hand, “Of course. Nice to see you again.”  
Frank was chewing gum. His mother shot him a look as he smacked on it before saying, “Nice to see you, too.” His words had a darker tone than mine, and I was beginning to get the idea that he was always like that now--dark and cynical, especially when it came to the religion that shut him out.  
I cleared my throat, years of regret and heavy loads of guilt weighing on my mind, “Do you have time to talk? It’s been so long.” After Frank had left the church, I’d decided that, if ever given the chance, I would set things right, or at least try, even if it was already too late.  
He seemed to think for a moment, and then glanced at his mother, who smiled and nodded at him. “Sure.”

Frank took the seat in front of my desk without being told to; he’d sat in that chair a few times before. I sat down across from him, folding my fingers in my lap while he looked around for a moment, taking in the changes.  
“Have you kept the faith?” I asked him, prompting his eyes to finally land on me.  
He chuckled for a moment, as if there was some kind of inside joke that I missed, but then answered with a straight, “No.”  
I nodded, unsurprised but disappointed. “Are you of another faith now?”  
His head moved from side to side slowly, prolonging the moment of silence. “No faith for me.”  
Unsure of how to approach what I wanted to speak about, I allowed silence to ensue. I sighed slowly and then took in a long breath, preparing myself, “Those things I told you… years ago--”  
“Complete and utter bullshit.”  
I blinked and stared at him, surprised at his interjection even though I shouldn’t have been.  
He began to elaborate, “Made-up rules from a made-up god just to keep people who are different from being that way. To keep weirdos in line. To keep people like me from being happy because people are afraid of anyone who’s different.” He paused and looked at me, intense and nearly frightening, “People like us, I mean.”  
There was nothing I could do but stare at him for a few long moments, mind working slowly to comprehend his bitter words.  
He noticed that I’d been caught of guard, and used my silence to slip in a question that hit me right in the gut. “Are you happy?”  
No. “Yes, I’m happy.” I kept my voice gentle, monotone as to keep it from betraying me.  
Frank shook his head but didn’t comment.  
“I don’t believe that crap you told me anymore. I believe in acting on my desires.” For the second time that day, I felt a sharp pang of jealousy in my chest.  
The smirk on his face became more prominent, and he nearly grinned as he informed me, “You’re lucky I didn’t believe in that back then.”  
I raised an eyebrow, silently inquiring.  
He swallowed hard before he explained himself, the smirk shrinking until it was all but gone, “Those dreams I had?” I nodded once, signalling that I remembered. “A lot of them were about you, Father Way.” There was a pang of something else in me, lower in my gut, and I leaned back in my chair a little, face beginning to grow warm.  
“Man, that fucking sucked.” Frank continued, head tilting to the side and staring down at the carpet. “Being so incredibly attracted to the person who told me I couldn’t do shit about what I felt. That what I felt was somehow fucking wrong. That doing what I fucking wanted would send me straight to Hell. You know I really-” His voice was low and dark, and it grinded on my ears in the most uncomfortable way. I couldn’t stand it.  
“Frank, stop.”  
His eyes flicked up to mine in an instant, filled with something fiery. I couldn’t quite decide if it was anger or something else. “What, you don’t want to hear about all of the pain you caused me? Is that too much for you?”  
“I know what I did, Frank, and I’m sorry. Really, very sorry.” That silenced him, a slight confusion calming the fire in his eyes. “I don’t think it’s wrong, and I don’t think you’ll be damned for acting on your desires.”  
Frank blinked at me, bewildered. “Are you saying I should have--”  
There was that pinch in my gut again, and I quickly shook my head, cutting him off, “In the appropriate situation, I mean. As an adult, with a consenting man your age.”  
He huffed, crossing his tattooed arms over his chest. “Well. If you didn’t think any of that was wrong, why the hell did you tell me otherwise?”  
I sighed, the guilt of six years dragging my shoulders down at my sides, “I thought that it would be easier on you, as a kid of faith, if I swayed you from it earlier on. I thought you wouldn’t have to struggle with it so much later on.”  
Huffing again, Frank’s entire frame seemed to tense. The fire was in his eyes again, but it looked different now. “I’m not a kid of faith.” Not really a kid at all, anymore. “I should go. Mom’s probably waiting.”  
He stood from his chair abruptly but I spoke up quickly before he had a chance to turn his back to me. “You should come back next week; maybe consider taking up the faith again.”  
As he turned, he nodded. “Yeah, I’ll come back. I want nothing to do with your faith, though.” That confused me. What purpose did coming to the church serve if he wanted nothing to do with what the church was built around?  
Frank placed his hand on the doorknob, twisting it slightly before turning his head over his shoulder to tell me, “By the way, I still have those dreams.” His voice was small but not in the timid way it had been when he’d entered this space at the age of fourteen.  
I cleared my throat and mumbled, “Yeah, that’s normal.”  
He shook his head, though, a faint smile appearing on his lips. His lip ring caught a ray of light and twinkled at me. “No, I mean… the ones about you.” 

The pages in front of me could have been blank for all I really knew. I stared at them as if they themselves were the source of all of my problems, all of my guilt and fear and sadness. The words were blurred in my unfocused vision, and I couldn’t even really remember what book it was that I was trying to read.  
There was a knock on the door of my study, so I looked up, focusing my eyes on something real for the first time in maybe an hour.  
It was mikey, his lanky frame peeking through the cracked door. I motioned for him to come in and he did, leaning back against the door silently and watching me for a few seconds.  
“So is it something you want to talk about or should I just go pack?”  
I stared at him, blank and slow, “What?”  
He sighed, “Why are you like this all of the sudden? You were having a good couple of weeks. You were painting.”  
I shrugged, glancing down at the abandoned painting of a rotted zombie hand that I’d pushed aside on the floor behind my desk. “Tired, I guess.”  
But he just stared, adjusting his glasses and then continuing to stare because he could always see right through me.  
So I shrugged again, breaking under the pressure of his eyes, “Just been thinking about… y’know.” He did know, I didn’t have to name the topic. I didn’t like to name it. “And Dad, too, I guess.” At that, his shoulders drew in a bit, only barely, and he nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Sixteen years coming up.” I muttered weakly.  
“Tuesday.” He nodded again, gaze dropping to the floor. Our heads both dipped in unison, as if we’d wordlessly agreed on a moment of silence.  
He cleared his throat when it was over, “If this is about you thinking he wouldn’t have approved, then you know what I’m gonna tell you.”  
Yeah, I knew.  
I let him tell me anyway. “He would have approved.”  
“He didn’t approve.”  
“He didn’t know that you were--y’know.” It wasn’t that he was afraid to say it. He just knew that I was afraid to hear it. As if the verbal affirmation would make the desires even stronger.  
“He would have hated me if he knew.”  
“He would have loved you no matter what and you fucking know it.” My brother scowled at me, and I flinched back a little in my chair even though he was a good four meters away from me. He looked angry. “Yeah, he had his beliefs, and yeah, he felt really strongly about them, but you know what would always trump them?” He stared at me, as if he expected me to answer. I didn’t. “Us. He loved us more than his god, even if he said he didn’t.”  
I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe that. A god was supposed to be something you were dedicated to, something you’d give your life for, something more important than all else.  
“It wouldn’t have mattered to him, Gerard. You honestly think that after he put up with all that shit you gave him in high school, he’d hate you over a tiny little thing like you being… y’know?” Mikey’s words grew difficult to listen to. He was wrong, I knew he was, and it made my stomach hurt.  
“Everyone has a tipping point.”  
Mikey scoffed and pushed himself off of the door, walking over to my desk. “You remember that time in high school when the cops found you on the side of the road with your pants around your ankles, so high you hardly knew who you even were?” My stomach sank further and I wished Mikey hadn’t brought the incident up, “It was what, like three in the morning when the cops called the house? He looked so mad. I was sure you’d hit his tipping point. But then after he grounded you and sent you to bed, he asked me if I thought there was any hope for you, and I said that I hoped so. He was silent for a little while but then he told me that there was. And I got kinda angry ‘cause I knew I never would’ve gotten away with that shit, but he was letting you off so easy; he wasn’t even mad anymore.”  
There were tears in my eyes. I hated when Mikey talked about Dad like that. I hated reliving the memories, I hated wanting to tear my skin off with the thought of everything I shouldn’t have done when Dad was alive.  
We sat there for a long time, the only sound coming from downstairs, where Alicia was moving around, packing her things for California.  
“I just didn’t want to give him any more shit than I’d already given him.” The drugs, the booze, the late nights and weekends out at who-knows-where with who-knows-who doing who-knows-what. I’d piled it all on top of him and the last thing I needed to do was add to it all by informing him that I had these unnatural desires, that I wanted things that were wrong; so, so wrong.  
Mikey took in a long, deep breath and I could tell that he was losing his patience quickly. “Nevermind Dad.” He tried really hard not to let his voice quiver when he muttered, “He’s gone now, anyway.” It did quiver. “So don’t let him dictate your life now.”  
“It’s too late, I’m a priest.” I looked down, the tears finally subsiding. I pretended to regain interest in the book I had placed in front of me.  
“You shouldn’t have become a priest.” Mikey’s voice was heavy, as if my own life choices weighed on him as heavily as they did on me.  
“I had to,” My voice became defensive, “I had to do something that would've made him proud.”  
But by now, Mikey was tired of hearing what I had to say, and he’d turned his back to me, inching toward the door again.  
“What time is your flight?” I asked him, quick before he left.  
He looked over his shoulders, eyes tired, “Early tomorrow morning. So…” He shrugged, “Probably won’t see you until we’re back, I guess.”  
I nodded, “Have fun in California.”  
He shrugged again and turned to leave, tossing words over his shoulder, “Text me if you need anything. Seriously.”  
I didn’t notice until the door closed how hot it had grown in my study.

True to his word, Frank arrived at the church early Sunday morning with his mother at his side, the same quirk at the corner of his lips. I hid in my office for a while longer than usual, pushing it until the last minute when I absolutely had to head to the chapel and begin the service. I didn’t want to come face-to-face with that smirk again.  
I did come face-to-face with that smirk, however, after the service as I was doing my rounds, speaking with the people, making polite small talk and attempting to give small bits of spiritual guidance. The church-goers never would have noticed, but I felt immensely unqualified to be giving them guidance. Only sort-of believing in God didn’t really make me a great candidate.  
I was speaking with an elderly lady whose name had escaped me when I noticed Frank hovering off to the side, a small cup of coffee held in one of his hands, his eyes staring at it absentmindedly as he casually waited, discrete. I excused myself to the bathroom, making sure to turn my back to Frank as if I hadn’t seen him.  
My entire body relaxed when I stepped inside the bathroom, waiting for a moment to be sure that he hadn’t followed.  
Splashing some water on my face, I noticed someone exiting one of the stalls behind me. It was Frank’s father, whose name was also Frank. He a quiet man who I had never really heard speak more than one sentence at a time. He looked at me now, sticking his hands in the sink beside mine.  
“Are you… alright, Father Way?” He looked a bit nervous, staring at me as if my fears and thoughts were written across my face. “You look a bit red.”  
I shook my head, forcing a smile at him, “Just hot is all. These clothes aren’t the most comfortable in the summer heat.” My reflection stared back at me, and I noticed what Frank’s father had; a flush had spread from my cheekbones all the way down to the where the rim of my collar circled my neck.  
“Ah.” He muttered, and that was all. He was out in about five more seconds, disappearing as quickly as he had appeared.  
His son was waiting outside of the bathroom when I walked through the door, and then there was no hiding, no avoiding that little quirk at the corner of his lips. “Father Way--” He stopped me, reaching a hand out to touch my arm as I began to walk past. “Do you have time to speak to me?” His eyes were wide in a look of feigned innocence, the slight smirk disappearing for a moment.  
“I--sure.” My gut dropped and I guided him to my office, taking my time to take my own seat as he quickly sat down in his, eager to speak to me again. All I could feel was dread.  
“So.” I cleared my throat, the muted sound of church-goers chatting outside of the door providing me with at least a bit of comfort. “Is something troubling you?”  
Frank shrugged lazily, leaning back in his chair. The slight smirk had returned, “I was wondering if we could talk about you, actually.”  
My dread grew. I didn’t want to talk about me. “Alright, I suppose that’s…” But I trailed off, voice audibly unsure.  
It was good enough for Frank, “Father Way, have you ever…” He paused, looking down at the coffee cup still in his hands before setting it down on my desk and looking back up at me, hands folding over his stomach, “Have you ever been with another man?”  
“We’re not talking about me.” I shut him down, all of my senses suddenly on alert, my heart and stomach doing flips.  
He blinked, taken back, “It was just a simple question.”  
“You’re invading my privacy, Frank.”  
“So I’ll take that as a yes, then.”  
“What? No.”  
“If the answer was really ‘no’, then you would have said so right off the bat.” He had this clever look on his face. I wanted to erase it from my mind. I wanted to erase everything about him as he was before me from my mind. Never would I have imagined that the little timid Iero boy would have grown up to be such an intimidating little devil. I felt threatened. I felt my entire career, the entire life I’d built, being threatened.  
“Frank, we’re not talking about this.”  
“So you haven’t, though--I mean, not recently? Like since you became a priest?” One of his eyebrows rose and I noticed that he had in an eyebrow piercing that hadn’t been in the week before.  
“Stop, Frank.”  
He ignored my pleas, “‘Cause you had to take a vow of celibacy or whatever, right?”  
“Stop talking about this.” My volume rose to the point that those outside of my office were probably able to hear it, but I was desperate to knock the words out of his mouth. With my fist, if I had to.  
Frank’s eyes narrowed, and he fell silent for a moment, that smirk growing just a smidge stronger, “Or… maybe you have been with a man recently?” He shrugged, and I suddenly couldn’t speak. “I mean… that would explain why you’re getting so defensive.”  
I spoke through clenched teeth, “I’m being defensive because you are invading my privacy.” It was so much hotter in my office than it had been minutes before. The flush on my neck and cheeks had probably spread to the rest of my face, and I probably looked ridiculous; a red, sweaty, flustered mess. It was so painfully obvious that I had something to hide, and I hated myself for getting so worked up. Everything would have been just fine if I’d said no, right off the bat like he said, and kept my cool.  
The silence sounded calm and felt anything but as Frank stared at me, eyes narrowed like a snake, about to prey on me, smirk inching outward slowly.  
“Right. But hell, I already know things about you that could get you in big trouble. What’s the harm in telling me just this one little thing?”  
I wanted it to end. I wanted to go home and find Mikey and cry into his arms like I had countless times when we were teenagers, when I felt so depressed and hated myself so much that I was just about ready to die. But I couldn’t just walk out and Mikey was in California visiting his wife’s family, and we weren’t teenagers anymore. I wasn’t a depressed, self-loathing kid anymore. My years of being allowed to stop everything to sit down and sob were over.  
“It was one time.” The words burst out of me quietly, yet violently at the same time. “Years ago--you must’ve been eleven or twelve or…” I shrugged, “I never did it again.”  
Frank stared, eyes going wide. “Who--Who was it?’  
I couldn’t look up at him, couldn’t meet anyone in the eyes as the confession spilled out of me, “He… well, I met him at a concert. But I didn’t realize that he… attended this church until afterwards.” My shoulders sagged with the weight of my sin and I tried so hard to hide the tears in my eyes. If I kept my head down, he couldn’t see them.  
Frank didn’t speak for what felt like a very, very long time.  
When he did, his voice was low and measured, and only barely above a whisper. Almost gentle. “So he knew who you were, right? He knew he was fucking a priest?”  
I shrugged weakly. “Probably. I never talked to him again and he stopped coming here.” I could still remember his face, though, and I could still remember how his skin felt on mine. I could still remember kissing him and touching him and the feeling it gave me.  
I could still remember the guilt I felt when I woke up naked next to a man the next morning.  
“You should head home, Frank.” I looked up at him, even though the tears, and the sight alarmed him.  
“Oh--Father Way are you… are you crying?”  
I shook my head quickly, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, “No. You should go.”  
“I-I’m sorry. Really, I am.” Frank assured me, eyes wide and sincere. It was the look of regret, almost like a ghost of the one I’d had in the mirror on that morning, disgusted with myself.  
“It’s fine--go home.”  
“I shouldn’t have pried.” He began to stand, picking up his coffee and holding it close to his chest with both hands, not turning to leave quite yet. “I should have stopped when you told me to--I’m sorry. Really.”  
I nodded, gaze dropping to my desk, “It’s alright.”  
“Sorry.” He murmured one more time, slipping out of my office and leaving me all alone.

Frank showed up to my office again, but only three days later, on a Wednesday night, the church nearly empty aside from a youth group in the basement.  
His visit would be short, he told me, his eyes wide and cautious, as if he was afraid that I would still have tears in my eyes from our last conversation. He was there to invite me to dinner at his house the next night, with his parents. I had been extremely reluctant at first, until he explained to me that he was hoping I’d be able to sway his mom to accepting him--she wasn’t too keen on him being gay. At that, I’d immediately accepted the invitation, eager to do anything I could to possibly reverse the damage I’d done on that little Iero boy, even if the man in front of me was almost a different person altogether.  
So, I found myself on Frank’s parents’ doorstep that Thursday afternoon, uncomfortably aware of the fact that it would probably be the first time Frank had ever seen me without my clerical clothes on. I was wearing a black button-up shirt and black slacks. There had been a moment, back at my own house, that I considered wearing dark jeans, but I wanted to look respectable to Frank’s mother, figuring my appearance could play at least a small role in persuading her.  
I also squirmed at the thought of wearing jeans in front of Frank. Something about the denim on my legs had felt too friendly. I didn’t want to feel too friendly with Frank.  
Linda greeted me at the door, welcoming me into the house, commenting that I was a bit early, and ushering me to the livingroom where I could sit until she’d finished preparing dinner. I thanked her and she asked me if I wanted a beverage, I said no politely and took a seat as she disappeared into the kitchen. My nerves were suddenly on high, and I could hear someone coming down the stairs behind me.  
It was Frank, swinging around the couch so that I could see him and grinning at me, but not in a way that at all resembled that smirk he’d been wearing so much recently. “Thank’s for coming.” He muttered, taking a seat next to me. That felt friendly. I didn’t want to feel friendly with him.  
I gave him a small nod, “It’s no problem.”  
“Just be gentle.” Frank said, and I nearly went into cardiac arrest because shit, that was definitely something that had been uttered to me before, in a much different context.  
I pushed back the memories of that man, the only man I’d ever been with, and muttered a dubious, “What?”  
Frank blinked, eyes innocent and round, and I was certain that he’d only pretended not to notice the way I’d taken his words.  
“Don’t force it.” I nearly groaned in frustration. Was he meaning to speak in innuendo? “She’ll shut you right out if you’re too forward. That’s what she did to me. Don’t really tell her what she should believe so much as… suggest what she should believe.”  
I nodded, grateful that the possible innuendos were over. “I’ll be as polite as possible.”  
He nodded back, turning his torso toward me a bit, “Good.” He glanced behind him, toward the opening of the kitchen where his mother’s back could be seen, on the far end. “Oh--” He looked back to me, and suddenly there wasn’t as much innocence in his eyes, “One more thing.”  
Before I thought to ask, ‘what?’, he’d connected his lips to my throat, licking and sucking for a moment while I sat still in utter shock, his mother’s back still right there, in my view. I could have shrieked or yelped or made some other noise that his mother would have heard and then turned around to investigate, but instead, I made a small whine--involuntary--and used my fingers to detach him from me, like he was a leech sucking just above my collarbone. We stared at each other, eyes wide for different reasons, and then his mother yelled something to him, without turning around, apparently, and he disappeared from the couch, leaving me clutching the air, confused and in a state of slight panic. 

The rest of the evening at Frank’s parents’ house passed without much incident, the conversation over our dinner a mere blur of I strongly believe-- and but the Bible says-- and don’t you think God-- and but Father Way, homosexuality is--. I quickly lost interest in the conversation, even as I continued it, because nearly as soon as it started, regardless of my attempts to merely suggest, it became clear that would be no swaying Linda Iero.  
What wasn’t a blur was the feeling of Frank’s lips pressed against the warm, flushed skin of my throat as we sat on his parents’ couch, as if we were both hormonal teenagers. The memory of it as I drove home filled me with dread and something else I didn’t want to acknowledge, both in the pit of my stomach. 

As if Frank knew just how distraught and confused he’d left me after that weird… thing that happened on his parents’ couch, he kept his distance from me that following Sunday. It was like he was giving me a break; some time to breath. And although I was thankful for that, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant for the next week, or the week after that. Would he stop talking to me? Would he try that thing on me again? Both possibilities caused an unpleasant twist in my stomach.  
That little twist turned into something larger, something a lot more terrifying when there was a knock on my office door one evening, exactly a week after I had dinner with Frank and his parents.  
It was Frank. I could see him peeking through the little window next to the door of my office, which usually had blinds over it. After the last time Frank came to talk to me in my office, on a quiet weekday evening, I’d pulled the blinds up and kept them up, just in case he ever stopped by again.  
I breathed easier when I could see through the window to the church’s little lobby, where anyone was free to walk through and glance into my office. Sometimes when Frank was in there alone with me, I felt suffocated. I needed more air, even if there wasn’t any actual air coming through the glass window.  
I waved him in because there seemed to be nothing else I could do. I was a priest. A spiritual advisor. I wasn’t allowed to simply turn people away.  
He greeted me politely and took his seat in front of me, hands in his lap. I gave him a small nod, hoping to communicate that he could start without actually using my voice, which I was afraid might make him notice the way I was shaking ever so slightly.  
“Can we talk about you, again?”  
No. “I don’t think that’s--”  
He smiled at me, though, all small and secret-like, as if it was some kind of inside joke. “I won’t make you cry this time, promise.”  
“No, I--fine. What do you want to talk about?” There was defeat in my voice and dread in my stomach, growing with every look he gave me; dark and fiery.  
“I was just wondering, y’know, why you would have become a priest if you’re gay. Isn’t that, like, against the rules somehow? And,” He paused, as if searching for the words. “why would you choose a religion that’s against what you are?”  
I stared at him for a long time, my mouth still, pulled into a straight line with my lips drawn in as if I was trying to create a physical barrier to keep the truth from spilling out of my mouth. I didn’t want to do that again. I didn’t know why I did it last time; why I let it slip out that I’d been with that guy years ago.  
After a long time, I shook my head and muttered, “That’s personal.”  
But he narrowed his eyes at me, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at me as if I somehow owed it to him to spill. I didn’t owe him anything, I’d decided. I did what I could to fix the damage within his family. It wasn't my fault that my attempt was fruitless. I’d tried, and it was all I could do. Yeah, I’d damaged him when he was younger, but it was years ago. I didn’t owe him a single word.  
Only, I had a heavy feeling that I still owed him a lot.  
The damage I’d done was scarring. I knew because I’d felt the same damage in myself every day since I was a teenager. It was the damage of a belief that threw you away, labelled you as trash and told you that the things you felt were filthy, never to be acted upon.  
I asked myself the same questions he’d asked me all the time, but I actually knew the answer.  
The answer was that I owed it to my father. After disappointing him for years, causing him so much grief, I had to do something that would make it all even.  
“But I don’t understand.”  
“That’s okay.” I muttered, “You don’t have to understand my personal choices. Only I do.” I nearly patted myself on the back for a fantastic job at keeping my voice level. If I hadn’t been able to feel my palms sweaty, my fingers trembling under the desk, I would have guessed that I was totally calm.  
“But I want to.”  
I sighed, heavy, growing tired of Frank’s presence and wanting it at the same time because I didn’t want to be left alone with my thoughts. I wanted the conversation; something I could set my brain to auto-pilot to and just sit back and forget about my nervousness while my brain spewed out automatic answers. “You’re not going to. You’ll have to settle with that, Frank.”  
He pouted, almost like the little Iero boy would have. “I won’t settle.”  
“You’ll have to.” It was a shock to both of us when my voice rose a couple of levels in volume.  
His arms tensed a little over his chest, “Sorry--sorry. I just want to know these things about you, I guess.” His gaze dropped a little, staring distantly at something on my desk. I wasn’t sure what. His voice drawled on slowly, as if he was half-dreaming. “I think about you a lot when I’m not at church. And not always like in those dreams--not always in that way. But just… you, I guess. Like. I wonder about all these things and what you’d say and do and why and…” He shrugged, “I’m just really curious. I can’t help wanting to know about you--I just do. Sorry.”  
My breath felt thick as it traveled through my throat, and, even with the blinds drawn up, exposing a small view of the outside, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt suffocated.  
Frank had a crush on me.  
I called it a crush in my head because that sounded more elementary, less serious. A crush. Just a little, silly thing that didn’t really mean much.  
But in my gut, it felt like something not so small, not so silly.  
I wiped my palms on my pants, keeping my hands busy so that the wouldn’t shake so much. They were starting to ache and my head did too, a little bit dizzy with the words Frank was slowly injecting me with. Words seemed to be nonexistent in my mind. As if I forgot how to form syllables and string together a sentence. I stayed silent, staring at my desk in roughly the same spot Frank’s eyes had fallen.  
“Sorry.” He said again, and then just one more time, “Sorry. Just. I came back here after being away for like--” He paused, and in my peripheral vision, I saw him wipe his hands on his jeans as if he was as nervous as I was. “four years, I saw you and all this stuff just came back to me and I--” his voice broke, “I don’t know. I thought I’d see you again and hate you, and for a while, I kinda did, but now, I just.” He shrugged, “I just think about talking with you a lot. And. Well, other stuff.”  
Breaking my staring contest with the empty coffee cup on my desk, I risked a glance at Frank, and suddenly, it was the little Iero boy sitting in front of me again. Nervous, sweaty palms, quiet voice, downard stare. Something in my heart jumped. The little Iero boy was buried underneath that dark smirk, those fiery eyes.  
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Wasn’t that what happened to all of us--our kid selves just got buried under the years of emotional and physical change?  
It surprised me because when he returned from his four year hiatus with the church, he’d looked so incredibly sure of himself, so confident and ready to take on the fucking world. It had been like he’d taken that scared and ashamed Iero boy and beaten the shit out of him until he receded into the dark corners of his brain, where he’d stay and never resurface.  
But still, I didn’t speak a word. I couldn’t. My throat felt closed up.  
We sat for a long time in thick silence, and Frank stared down at his hands until looking up at me one more time before finally ending the noiselessness.  
“Can I just ask you one more question?”  
Again, I gave him a small nod, because I was afraid to use my voice.  
“Are you gonna push me away?”  
And staring back at me wasn’t Frank. It was the Iero boy still, eyes round, young, naive and damaged. And fuck if I could say a word to hurt the kid I’d already damaged so badly.  
I still owed him. I would never not owe him.

Although I expected to see a lot more of Frank, and soon, I hadn’t quite expected him to show up at my house the following night. In fact, I nearly had a heart attack when I answered the door tiredly, expecting one of Mikey’s misinformed friends and instead finding Frank, hair all hanging in his face and flapping around in the slight breeze.  
“Uh.” I greeted him brilliantly, using my body to block his entry to my house. I was in my lounge pants and a dirty t-shirt.  
He grinned at me, in a way that wasn’t quite Frank but wasn’t quite the Iero boy, either. It was something in between and it made me want to slam the door in his face, tell him to never show up to church again.  
“Hi, sorry, is it a bad time?”  
If me being home alone in my pajamas, completely unprepared for the presence of a skinny jean-clad Frank, then “Kind of, yeah.”  
His grin seemed to fall off of his face. “Oh.”  
“But.” It took a large amount of self control to keep the door open and to not grind my teeth together. “You can come in. I guess.”  
“Oh. Okay, cool.”  
I stepped to the side stiffly, and he slid right through the crack in the doorway, inviting himself into my living room and taking a look around. “Huh. This place feels kinda big to live alone in.” He slipped off his leather jacket, making himself comfortable.  
His words didn’t register in my mind until a long moment after he said them, when he looked at me expectantly, “Uh. I live here with my brother and his wife.”  
“Oh.” He gave me a weird look, “Are they. Like. Here?”  
I blinked. “No. They’re in California.” I wanted to kick him out of the house right then. I should have.  
“Oh. Well. Okay.”  
I moved to take his jacket from him, turning and hanging it on the little rack behind me, and I felt like I was moving a frame behind everything else around me, delayed by my mind, which was on overload trying to figure out why Frank had suddenly appeared on my doorstep.  
“Why are you--how did you even…?”  
Frank got the gist. “My mom has a church directory.” We seemed awkward there, standing in the front doorway. “And. Uh. I don’t know. I just wanted to see you, I guess.” He looked down, as if scared I would scold him, and I wanted to scold him. I wanted to grab his shoulders, shake him, scream that I was a priest, that I was nearly twenty years older than him, that him being here was totally and completely wrong and weird.  
But there was that flicker of the Iero boy in his eyes, and I couldn’t. I just fucking couldn’t.  
So, instead of scolding him or kicking him out like I should have, I said, “Okay. Do you want something to drink?”  
He shrugged, looking back up at me with this happy glimmer in his eyes, and the Iero boy was beaming at me for not scolding him or kicking him out. Like I should have.  
I really fucking should have kicked him out.  
“No, I just. Wanted to talk for a while.”  
“Alright.” And we couldn’t just talk in the doorway, so I led him upstairs to my study.  
I had a bedroom next door and I tried as hard as I possibly could to forget that it was there, just a door over, and that Frank sometimes thought about me in that way and that when he thought about that, it probably involved a bed of some sort and that maybe if he knew that there was a bed next door, he’d--  
I stopped my train of thought short, sliding the door of my study shut. I considered leaving it open for a long moment, but without Mikey and Alicia in the house, it didn’t matter if it was open or closed. We were forced to have the privacy I dreaded either way.  
“So.” Frank muttered as he took in my study, eyes scanning the bookshelves and the desk and the piles of books and bibles I had stacked on the floor because I’d ran out of shelf space. “What’s your brother doing in California?”  
I took in a long breath, trying to calm my stomach. “Visiting in-laws.”  
Frank nodded, but I didn’t see why he cared. Maybe he could see how on edge I was and was trying to calm me a bit. The effort was appreciated, though it didn’t put me any more at ease.  
I moved to pull out the seat behind my desk and, because there was only one chair in the room, I first offered it to Frank, who said he’d rather stand, and then I took my seat in the chair. My muscles relaxed a bit, but tensed up when Frank turned to face me, and the fire was back in his eyes. Instead of that weird balance between Frank and the Iero boy, he was just Frank now, small smirk and dark eyes.  
“I guess I lied.”  
“What?” I breathed, as if the air had been kicked out of me by Frank’s stare. He wasn’t quite looking at me like I was prey, but I felt that way.  
He shrugged, “I mean. I like talking to you, but--I guess that’s not really why I wanted to come over.”  
I played dumb as if my life depended on it. “What do you mean?”  
“Can you stand up?”  
“No.”  
“Why not?”  
“Just. No. You should leave, Frank. You shouldn’t be at my house. You really shouldn’t--”  
He frowned, “You said you wouldn’t push me away.”  
“I’m not.” I frowned, but stood from my chair, arms folding over my chest, “You can talk to me all you want at the church, but this is my house.’  
“Sorry.” He muttered, almost as if he was scolding himself as I should have done the moment he walked in. “I can’t help it, though.” Frank was gone again, the Iero boy back, soft eyes boring into me, and that’s when something in my head went off, an alarm that was calling bullshit on those round, young eyes. But he was taking steps closer to me, invading my personal space, and then the alarm went dead, as did nearly everything else in my brain.  
“Just. I can’t help it.” And then his hands were on my shoulders and his lips were on my cheek, just grazing for a moment before they moved in to touch my lips. My brain seemed to spark back into life at that touch, and my hands pushed at him automatically, distancing his mouth from mine.  
“Frank--” My voice sounded strained, “What the hell are you doing?”  
But it was so damn hard when that little Iero boy, who I had crushed and damaged so irreparably, was staring at me.  
“You said you wouldn’t push me away.” His voice nearly broke.  
And yeah, I did say that.  
And yeah, I did owe him, right?  
So the next time he forced his lips against mine, I didn’t push him away. Because I owed him.

I had the sheets pulled all the way up under my chin so that all that was exposed was above my neck, and he was laying there to my right with his chest out, and there were tattoos and smooth skin displayed for all to see. For me to see.  
I didn’t want to see it. I felt what I imagined murderers--the ones that weren’t psychopaths--felt after they killed. Immense guilt, drowning out everything around me. The room appeared fuzzy and sounds were distant, all except the sound of Frank’s breathing, still labored but slowing down as each minute of silence passed.  
I couldn’t bring my eyes to look at him. I stared at the ceiling, nervous, as if my own father were there, or God, staring down at me and shaking his head. Disappointed in me.  
Disappointment. I was a disappointment. Not only had I broken my own promise to myself, made after that night years before, but I’d done just another thing that would have made my father so, so disappointed. I wanted to rip my skin off.  
“Don’t look so stressed, jeez.” Frank said, and there was a cigarette in his mouth. He motioned to it as to ask if I was okay with him doing that in my room, and I just shrugged. In that moment, it didn’t matter that not even I was allowed to smoke in the house. I just wanted him out of there. I just wanted to punish myself. I wanted to hurt myself like I used to back in high school. “You just got laid.” He pointed out.  
“You don’t think this is wrong?” I asked him, eyes still on the ceiling. There was a click of his lighter and then a moment later he was exhaling a cloud of smoke in my direction. It scratched my throat, but I managed not to cough. I itched for a cigarette, but I’d been clean for years, so I didn’t even have any on my bedstand anymore.  
He shrugged, “You’re the one that said it wasn’t.”  
It was difficult not to snap at him. “I said it wasn’t wrong in certain situations. I’m a priest. A goddamn priest, Frank. Not to mention the fact that I’m twenty fucking years older than you.”  
The severity of the situation was lost on Frank, though, and he laughed, “Nineteen years. And anyway--I’ve banged older.”  
Even though I tried to keep my eyes glued to the ceiling, I couldn’t help but gape at him. “You…” But words escaped me.  
He nodded, grinning, and there wasn’t a trace of the Iero boy in him, “The difference was twenty-three years, to be exact. But he wasn’t a priest. So I guess you still take the cake.” He mumbled the last part around the cigarette, turning to wink at me. I wanted to puke a little bit. I felt sick. With myself, mostly. I should have kicked him out.  
“Do you just go around fucking middle-aged men?”  
He laughed, “I prefer dudes my age, actually.” He turned his head to look at me again, “But you. You’re an exception.”  
I huffed, “This is--this is.” But there were no words for how wrong it felt, how dirty my entire body and everything inside of me felt. I was disgusted with myself. My head hurt with it.  
“Just sleep, Father Way.” He snuffed his cigarette out with something next to the bed--I couldn’t see--and then rested his head on my shoulder, pulling the sheets down so that his head rested on bare skin.  
“Don’t call me that.”  
“What do you want me to call you, then?” Frank’s voice was still Frank’s, not the Iero boy’s, but it was softer, and he looked up with me with eyes that still held fire, but the flame was much more subdued.  
I closed my eyes, “Gerard.”  
“Okay. Sleep, Gerard.” And I did sleep. By the time I woke, he was gone.

I found it difficult, that following Sunday, to keep the tears in when I was alone in my office. It was pathetic, really, how close to sobbing I was, but it was just like it had been back in high school, that intense hatred I felt for myself. The desire to rip the skin from my body and let myself bleed, a punishment for being so filthy. For doing things that were so wrong.  
For disappointing my father again.  
It didn’t matter that he was dead. It didn’t matter that he would never actually know that I had sex with Frank. It was this guilt that was like a ball and chain that I had to drag around the church with me because I had proved that all I was ever actually capable of was disappointing my father. I didn’t have the strength to stay away from the things I needed to stay away from.  
This feeling was proved when Frank stepped into my office after service that Sunday, and when, although I should have sent him off, I told him that he could of course come in.  
He sat down and, before he could even get a word in, I shook my head and informed him, “We can’t do that again.” I was kind of afraid that he’d ask what that was. Not that he wouldn’t know; it was just that I was getting the idea that he liked to toy with me. I didn’t want to have to explain what I meant when I said ‘that’. The aching in my unused muscles and the heavy guilt in my gut were enough of an explanation.  
But Frank didn’t ask me to elaborate, just tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes just a bit, “Why not? I thought you had fun.”  
I frowned, “It’s not happening again.”  
Frank frowned deeper, but the pout of his lips seemed more mocking than disappointed or upset. “Oh, I see.” He said after a while, and then the frown disappeared, that little smirk returning, “You only do one night stands, Father Way.”  
He enraged me. “Frank this is serious. It was--it was fucking wrong.”  
His shoulders rose lazily in a sloppy shrug, “What is it people say?” He paused, pursing his lips as if wracking his brain, “There’s no good without bad or something?” He nodded, “So a few harmless sins are healthy, right?”  
I shook my head, hands reaching up to rub at my tired eyes. After I’d woken to the empty bed, around midnight, I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep. I was exhausted. “That’s not how it works, Frank.”  
“Yeah?” Frank’s voice was biting, venomous. “Well pretending a hookup with someone who really fucking likes you never happened also isn’t how it works.” The smirk wasn’t on his face anymore. “Try taking my feelings into account. I do have some.”  
I couldn’t for the life of me discern whether it was an act; whether he really liked me--felt something for me on a romantic level--or whether he was faking it all, a dirty act to get into a priest’s pants. So, so wrong.  
“Try taking my job into account, Frank.” I was constructing a wall around myself in my mind, shutting him out, looking at him with cold eyes. Maybe he would just go away if he got the message that he made me feel sick, that he made me feel filthy and wrong and that I really, really didn’t appreciate it.  
But instead of speaking, he stood from his chair.  
And for a moment, I felt a weight lifted off of my chest, off of my entire body. I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore. I thought he was going to walk out.  
But, of course, he wouldn’t cave that easily. He’d gotten this far with me; he could probably go anywhere else with me. What was really dangerous was the fact that he seemed to know this.  
He was beside my chair, pulling at my arms and bringing me up to his level. My entire body felt weak; I allowed him to position me in front of him. We were so, so close. So dangerously close with that little window open across my office.  
“Don’t push me away. You can’t push me away.”  
The wall crumbled and my knees felt flimsy underneath the incredible weight of the sins I committed and the sins I was about to commit.  
There was an arm behind my neck and lips against mine, but they were slow and tentative, almost as if that small, little Iero boy had somehow gotten the guts to reach up and kiss me, with slow, gentle caution. He was giving me a moment, a small choice. I could withdraw from the kiss, and I could end it all right there.  
I wanted to withdraw. I wanted to end it. I wanted all of it to stop. Him, the kiss, the fiery eyes, the smirk.  
But I hesitated, waited a moment too soon, and then there were two hands on me, pulling me into it, and that was like a wordless promise.  
A promise that I would return his kisses as long as he continued to hold me.

I woke in a cold sweat, almost a week later, on a Friday evening. Images of my dreams were still lingering in my vision and the words were ringing in my ears.  
“You’ve done something horrible, Gee.”  
The image was of a man, tears sparkling in his eyes and light emitting from him everywhere, threatening to blind me. It was God. He bore a striking resemblance to my Father, and he’d called me by my father’s nickname.  
I wasn’t entirely sure what had woken me, my eyes still blearily staring up at the ceiling, where there was that image of that man, crying, disgusted, disappointed, and my head felt stuffed with cotton. There was a hand on my shoulder which pulled me from the dream, the ringing in my ears and the feeling of something so unpleasant I wanted to violently rip it out of me.  
For a moment, I thought the hand was Frank’s, but there were no tattoos, and I was a fool to think he would have stuck around. He never stuck around.  
Mikey was staring down at me, his brow furrowed, lips pulled into a tight line. “You okay, dude?”  
“Mikey--” My voice was scratchy, “I--uh, yeah, totally okay.”  
He nodded, taking a seat on the side of the bed and not speaking for a moment, “We just got home. Um. I thought you’d be at church.”  
I stretched my arms, tucking them under my head, “Got tired. Came home.” I lied.  
“Right. So. Why are you, um, naked?”  
My face turned red. I’d forgotten about my lack of clothes. I was covered mostly by the sheets, but part of one of my legs and everything above my stomach was uncovered. I shrunk myself down under the covers, pulling the fabric up around my chin.  
“Um.”  
Mikey shrugged, looking away. “I mean. Just. If there’s something you wanna tell me…”  
I shook my head quickly, vowing to myself that this would be the last time.  
It wouldn’t be the last time.  
“Right.” Mikey said again after a while. “Well if you change your mind…” He stood, “I won’t be mad at you or anything stupid like that. Obviously.”  
He began to walk out and I waited until he was pulling the door open to yelp, “Wait!”, and he turned around, eyebrow raised in question. I tried to shrink into myself further. “I slept with him three times, Mikey.”  
Mikey swallowed, and just nodded, eyebrow relaxing. He looked relieved, not angry or disappointed or even disgusted. In fact, if anything, he looked a bit pleased. “Okay, Gee. That’s okay.” When he said my name, I thought of my dream. It sounded different on his lips than it had on God’s. It sounded calmer. There was more love in it. In his eyes, there was a sparkle of something that wasn’t tears.  
I loved Mikey. I was pretty sure I owed him my life.

The fifth time Frank came to my house, I hadn’t been expecting him. He hadn’t called like he had the two times before, and he hadn’t mentioned at church a few days before that he was planning on showing up late Tuesday evening.  
So I was completely off guard when Alicia entered the kitchen, returning from getting the mail, with a tattooed, leather- and denim-clad Frank.  
“You’ve got a visitor, Gee.” She threw a thumb over her shoulder at him, her voice unstrained and unquestioning. She thought he was just some kid from church looking to talk to his priest for advice or something. Something innocent like that.  
Mikey, on the other hand, took one look at him and knew, sending me a slightly alarmed expression, eyebrows raised.  
I cleared my throat, awkward silence in the kitchen eating at me, and did my best to manage a calm, “Hello, Frank. We can speak in my study.”  
Frank nodded and didn’t wait for me, by now having memorized his way to my study--well, my bedroom, really.  
Alicia was out of the room, then, on her way to get some clothes out of the dryer or something, leaving Mikey and I alone for a moment of quiet.  
“Uh. He’s younger than I imagined.”  
My shoulders sagged and I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t see the disappointment.  
“But.” He said, after a while. “I mean, that’s okay. Doesn’t really matter, right? As long as there’s, like, consent.”  
I didn’t want to tell him he was wrong. I wanted to hug him and ask him how in the world he managed to love me with how filthy I was.  
So I hugged him, face buried at his bony shoulder, and he just sighed, whispering against my hair, “I wish you hadn’t done this to yourself.” 

“Don’t smoke. My brother’s home.”  
Everything was too quiet now that our breathing had slowed, now that my heart wasn’t pumping so loudly in my chest.  
Frank rolled his eyes and took a drag before blowing the smoke in my direction. I closed my eyes and was thankful as he put out the cigarette, replacing it in the pack he’d set on my night stand.  
There was a small chuckle to my right, but I kept my eyes closed, unsure if I prefered the sound of him beside me or the sound of the silence, which made my stomach churn. “Do you think they could hear us?”  
“No.” I winced, hoping that if I couldn’t hear Mikey and Alicia getting it on most nights, then they wouldn’t be able to hear us from all the way downstairs. Frank had been louder, I’d noticed, and I was sure it was because he wanted to be heard. He was sick. I was starting to hate him.  
I was starting to get the feeling that he hated me.  
The soft touches he’d attempted to soothe me with the first couple of times we’d slept together had disappeared by this point. After we finished, he rolled over to his side of the bed, lit a cigarette, and mostly ignored me except to make snide comments. I felt so foolish, wondering if he ever really had liked me in the first place.  
He seemed angry with me. He made love aggressively, even daring to cup his hand around my throat once or twice, squeezing in a way that wasn’t meant to be comforting or endearing. Nothing about the way he treated me was romantic.  
Maybe he wasn’t capable of that; maybe there was too much anger in him. Anger toward the church, at least. Anger toward me. Maybe I made him this way, six years ago when I told him everything about himself was wrong.  
“Do you care about me, Frank?” I asked, voice small. In my head, I replayed the scene in my office, just over two weeks prior, when the Iero boy had expressed how he thought about talking with me, wanting to know more about me. How he’d felt something for me.  
But the Iero boy was dead, and all that was left now was Frank’s fiery eyes, his sarcastic smile that mocked me, “No. Not even a bit.”  
I would have liked for his words to not affect me, but they hit me in the gut like a baseball bat in the boys’ locker room back in high school.  
“So this. This was just about fucking me, then.” Somehow, I’d mustered up the strength to keep my voice from shaking.  
But Frank laughed at me, low and sarcastic, and I could see his fingers itching for a cigarette. He looked at me, a lazy smile on his lips. “Just about fucking you? Father Way, I’m not that shallow. This is about more than just fucking you.”  
All I could do was stare at him, the fire in his eyes burning me slowly, and I didn’t understand a single thing about how he worked. “What is this about, then?”  
He turned his head away from mine, gaze falling on the ceiling. “Do you still think you can live a happy life? Without all that, I mean.” He waved his hand in the air, gesturing between us.  
“Without what?”  
“The pleasure. The sex. Making love. Acting on your desires.”  
My throat seemed to close up, not allowing the passage of words to my lips. I didn’t have words. I knew my voice would come out weak and he would see through my lies immediately.  
The truth was, I hadn’t been happy since college. I hadn’t been happy since Dad died and I decided that I couldn’t afford to love who I wanted; I couldn’t do another thing that would have disappointed him. On a daily basis, I denied myself something I needed. Something I wanted so badly that my entire body ached, that it haunted my dreams constantly, that I went through entire days thinking about almost nothing but my desires.  
We were both silent for a long time, and I could tell that he knew. He knew my unhappiness because I’d tried to force it upon him six years ago. He had overcome it, matured enough to realize that it was stupid and pointless to deny himself something he wanted so badly. I hadn’t.  
“I dated this guy in high school.” Frank spoke, and he was pulling that cigarette back out. I didn’t have the motivation to stop him. “Maybe a year after you told me I couldn’t do any of the stuff I wanted to do. And every time he tried to touch me, I made him stop. I didn’t want him to stop, but I told him to because you made me believe that it was wrong. I wanted him so bad. It was all I thought about, and it would have been so easy to just let it happen. But then I kept thinking about how you told me I couldn’t. That I would like…” he blew smoke up toward the ceiling, “go to hell or something. But then after a while, I realized how fucking stupid that was. I loved him. And I was holding myself back because some stupid priest told me to. So then the next time he tried to touch me, I let him.” Frank paused, turning his head, taking a drag, and blowing his smoke at me.  
“And guess what.” He whispered, but I wasn’t going to guess and he knew that. “After that, I was the happiest I had been in years.”  
Frank laughed, sitting up so that all I could see was his back. My vision seemed to zero in on him, and he was all that existed around me. “In my life of dirty, disgusting sin, I’ve found more happiness than you’ll ever find in your miserable, pathetic life, old man.” He pushed himself off of the bed and got dressed lazily, cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth.  
And as he walked out, back turned to face me, I soaked up every bit of him I could, committing the sight to memory because I had a feeling, sinking and dark, that it would be the last time I would ever see the man that the little Iero boy had become.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave me a comment telling me how you liked (or didn't like lmao) the story! Your comment doesn't even have to make sense I just love reading comments and I'm thirsty for attention!! Yay!


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